In the End
by ReadyFred-ReadyGeorge
Summary: Darth Lyravian is sent by his master; Darth Baras, to exterminate a colony of force wielders on the planet Kashyyk, but ghosts from Baras' past are returning to the spotlight, and Lyravian must turn his blade on the Sith legacy he inherited...
1. Orders

**AN: To everyone who subscribed to my profile, I'm sorry I've been away for so long, I bring a peace offering of fanfiction and hypothetical chocolate *gives you all toblerone*…now please don't kill me…**

**This story came to me whilst playing SWTOR far too much, and focusses on the characters of myself and several of my friends and regular guild mates in real life, as well as several of the companion NPC's, don't worry I'm not the main character, I don't do that sort of thing, but for the sake of anonymity I won't say who my character is, you shall just have to guess. :P**

**To anybody who has been watching Clone Wars Season 5, the ending brought some manly tears to my eye. Yes I confess it! Even if the final plot twist was a tad obvious, I called it in episode 18. Well, at least that clears up things certain characters. That's about as much as I can say without spoilers. If you haven't seen it, watch it! You will not be disappointed. You will also want to slap Tarkin with something very solid!**

**This fic has several dedications: To the real life Lyravian, Trebidan, Kereniss, Arthunus, Ursina and Mulmymy, you guys are awesome :P Also, to PirateGirl-1017, for your amazing conversations over the past year, and it was really lovely to meet you in person **** For those of you who haven't read her stuff, check out her profile now, and keep an ear out for our upcoming collaboration 'Severus Snape and his amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat' which has been in the pipeline far too long, but we should be able to get our heads together over soon-ish..I hope, watch this space. **

**Finally, may the force be with you all **

'_As Human Beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world…as in being able to remake ourselves.'_

_-Mahatma Gandhi-_

Darth Lyravian stepped onto the Bridge of the _'Dauntless' _with some trepidation, though you would not know it if you saw him. The drumbeat of each heavily armoured footfall left the cold metal floor reverberating in his wake, each bass thump of his feet echoing the words of his master into his skull.

A Step;

_Kill_

Another Step;

_Abomination_

He stopped:

_No survivors._

Lyravian came to a halt in front of the viewport and stared out into the void, the stars blinking in silent, stoic, static defiance against the kaleidoscopic maelstrom of light that had obscured the port until the _Dauntless_ dropped out of hyperspace minutes before. Emerging gradually from the darkness came the pearl orb of Kashyyk, and the Sith Lord savoured the moment of ethereal beauty as it eclipsed its sun. Lyravian ran a hand through his chestnut hair, scratching the back of his scalp absentmindedly as he cast his mind back to his last meeting with his master.

'_I have heard disturbing reports of a colony of force wielders conglomerating on the planet Kashyyk' Darth Baras' voice echoed around the small office afforded to him at the Korriban Sith Academy, a twang of barely suppressed rage permeable on the air. Lyravian kept his head bowed low, he knew better than to question the importance of anything his master said at such times, he forced himself not to think about all the various 'punishments' he had earned himself before he learned how to show respect to his master, but he still felt the subtle twinge of the scar across his left eye and his throat still constricted ever so gently of its own accord. 'This 'ashram' as they call it, is devoted to a supposed union of the light and dark sides of the force and has attracted several hundred followers, Jedi and Sith alike.'_

'_Why do the scholarly habits of such a minority concern you master?' Lyravian countered, trying to mask the perpetual irritation in his voice. If Baras sensed such insubordination, he said nothing of it. But the eyeslits on Baras' visor seemed to narrow, impossible though that was, as though the metal visage was trying to convey the seething rage that the Sith Master's invisible face could not._

'_Because, my _apprentice_..' Baras began to reply, putting particular emphasis on the last word, and forcing Lyravian to avert his eyes to the floor, lest he invite another painful lesson in humility, 'Such a union between the two disciplines of the force bastardises the Sith Order itself!' It breeds the purity of our power with the emotionless drivel of the Jedi, and it's mongrel spiritualistic offspring is hailed by those fools as mastery of the force!' Baras' paused to catch his breath and control his towering anger. 'It is our duty to strange such an abomination in its cradle!'_

_Lyravian nodded once, his poker face falling into line. Becoming the weapon instead of the man. 'What is thy bidding, my master?' _

_It took Baras several seconds to bring his anger under control, the force surrounding him seemed thinner without it, like the lungs of a diver just before coming up for air. Like the first wave to amble up to the shore after a typhoon. _

'_You will take all of our warriors and neophytes stationed here and on Dromund Kaas, as well as seven battalions of Imperial troops and six star destroyers from the Korriban defensive fleet, to Kashyyk, locate this pathetic circus of force bastardy and exterminate them all. Leave no survivors.'_

_Lyravian merely nodded, becoming suddenly aware of the lightsaber at his belt, as though the weapon was begging to be wielded. Begging to cleave life from the enemies of the Empire. 'What strength does our enemy possess my lord?'_

'_The ashram contains at least 1,000 Jedi and Sith, this we know, but my contact estimates that there may be as many as thirteen hundred force wielders within its walls, armed and dangerous naturally. Several hundred turncoats from the Imperial army are also confirmed to stand guard over the ashram, my contact believes there to be as many as four companies strong, possibly more. There are also several villages of native wookies nearby who will pose a dire threat, their numbers are unknown. My contact was only able to hedge a guess of some 3000 of the savages, but he himself sets no store by that estimate. He claims several villages lay too close to the ashram that he could not effectively infiltrate them without setting off the alarm. Be on guard my apprentice, wookies are formidable warriors, more than a match for Imperial soldiery and the equal of any Sith Neophyte in combat, do not underestimate them.'_

_Lyravian processed as much as he could, weighing up the numbers in his head. By his reckoning, there were at least 4,000 Sith between here and Dromund Kaas, though most were apprentices, some barely reaching the point where they could wield a proper lightsaber rather than a training blade. The enemy had his men outclassed, but he had them vastly outnumbered. There was but one factor left to assimilate into his lethal equation. 'Has the republic offered military support to these factionalists?' he asked, his voice cold and methodical._

'_Officially the republic does not know the commune exists, though many of the ashram's occupants are believed to be Jedi, they are likely rogues from their order, much as their Sith have as good as split from ours. Unofficially, my spies tell me that republic troop transports are mobilising in the Felucia system and that several Jedi relief ships have disappeared from the Balmorra warzone, it is little to set any great store by, but be on guard nonetheless._

'_Who is your contact my lord? I may need to coordinate my tactics with him, since he is so _clearly_ well informed of the enemy's strength.' Lyravian stopped abruptly, realising he had dropped just a tad too much sarcasm into his sentence, though luckily for him, Baras had more pressing issues than disciplining his apprentice's glib tongue. _

'_A bounty hunter named Trebidan, he fell under my radar after he destabilised the Exchange crime syndicate on Nar Shadaa single-handed. He is the lowest form of scum within the mercenarial dunghill. The man would sleep with a Rancor if you paid him enough in advance, and then if he was unsatisfied with his takings, he'd kill you for good measure and drain your personal fortunes afterwards. It is this exact mentality that makes him so useful, since the Empire's credits are as good as limitless, we can be assured of his loyalty and his combat prowess speaks for itself. He can handle himself against any Jedi or Sith.'_

_Lyravian grimaced, of all the despicable slime in the galaxy, he hated bounty hunters the most. They had Bantha dung for honour, and this one sounded no better. But he did not let the full extent of his disgust show, he dared not…yet. Sensing the briefing was at an end, Lyravian stood to leave, but just as he reached the door, he heard a voice sounding behind him. At first he did not recognise that the voice belonged to his master, all of the rage all of the malice that had permeated it before was absent. 'One final thing, my apprentice.'_

_Lyravian did not turn, instead he let his attentiveness show in his silence. _

'_The ashram is headed by a pair of human Sith Lords named Arthunus and Kereniss. The bounty hunter does not know about them, and does not need to, I sensed their leadership as soon as this conspiracy came to light.' Baras paused, calculating his next words, 'Both were once my apprentices and they were brilliant students. Had they not let their compassion and consciousness blind them to the power they could attain, they would have gone on to be mighty Sith. Even now, despite how far they have fallen, I feel a measure of pride for them.' Sensing Lyravian's shock in the force, Baras continued, lest his meaning be confused, 'They are formidable warriors, and learned scholars, and to defy the Sith Empire, knowing full well it's power takes courage, however quietly it is done.' But soon Baras' business-like voice returned. 'Nevertheless, their works must be undone, lest they collapse the Sith Order from within. Strike them from the history books my apprentice…but give them warriors' deaths…they have earned that much.'_

Opening his eyes, Lyravian gazed out at the gradually enlarging sphere of teal and green that was the Wookie homeworld, somewhere down there was the colony of rogues that he had been sent to destroy. Somewhere down there were the two rebels that his master had once tutored. He had known them faintly by reputation in his younger days; the two highest flyers of the academy, pitted against each other in order to see who would become Baras' apprentice, but after a day of intense lightsaber combat, neither had the upper hand and both were selected simultaneously, there could be no picking between them. They had fallen off of Lyravian's radar years ago, but he still remembered the local legends told about their fated battle amongst the younger academy students, such as himself. Lyravian snapped out of his reverie. Whoever they had been, they were his enemies now. Whoever they had been would matter so very little soon. For soon, by his hand, history would not remember that they existed.

Hundreds of miles below him, in the tallest spire of the ashram, Kereniss opened his eyes. He gazed across the small room at his oldest friend, already on his feet and staring out through the canopy. _So Arthunus sensed it too_, he internally monolgued, before absent mindedly chuckling to himself. _How could he not? It's like our enemy is trying to approach stealthily, but with a marching band playing his fanfare behind him. _Kereniss pulled himself to his feet and ruffled his scarlet hair, moving to stand by the other warrior. Together they stared out at the sparse colony below them, carved out of the wohshyyr trees by their Wookie hosts, as though the rooms, homes, halls and armouries had been grown out of the wood rather than made. Officially they called it an ashram, a _community_, but the wookies had fashioned for them a palace. It was beautiful to behold. And tragic to know that it might all be gone soon.

'The Empire is coming.' breathed Arthunus, the brunette Sith sounding less scared of the sentiment as resigned to it. Kereniss smiled at him, taking his lightsaber out of his belt and lazily spinning the hilt in his hand.

'We always knew they would.' Kereniss placed a hand on his friend's shoulder, in an attempt to be light-hearted in the face of adversity, he followed with 'Come on, let's go enjoy our last hours of peace…'

'You mean, let's go find our wives don't you?' Arthunus responded, a grin emerging on his face. Kereniss merely raised an eyebrow, silently conveying the words 'Of course.'

The two rebels turned towards the door, but before they left, they turned their gazes skyward, at the Imperial ships that they would not see for several hours yet, two lightsabers blazed to life, Kereniss' emerald blade and Arthunus' sapphire one raised in a warrior's salute to their invisible enemies.

And far above, on the bridge of his flagship, Lyravian smirked, sensing however briefly, the two bright sparks in the force that were his enemies on the planet below. Lyravian's own scarlet blade sprang into existence in his hand, as the Sith Lord answered the salute. The niceties had been observed.

The time had come.

**AN: REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW! NEXT CHAPTER WILL BE INSIDE OF 2 DAYS **


	2. Finding the Balance

**AN: COME ON GUYS, WHY NO REVIEWS? D: I don't bite, I welcome constructive critiscism. Just no trolls. Please. Common courtesy.**

**Again, thanks to my friends, whose characters are central to this fic, and with whom I have spent many a happy hour questing with, dwindling my social life into blissful oblivion :D I love you guys.**

'_Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.'_

_-Aristotle-_

The wookies of the Northern mountainous regions of Kashyyk have a saying, the closest translation of which approximates to: _It is always raining somewhere._ Arthunus had long mused on this particular colloquialism ever since he, his partner and their first cadre of followers had arrived on the world years ago. At first, he had taken the saying at face value, thinking it was a local way of making light of Kashyyk's overly sodden climate. But it had not taken the well-studied Sith Lord all that long to realise the true meaning behind the phrase, which when Arthunus thought about it, was as transparent as the metaphorical raindrops it referred to. No matter how well one may be feeling at a certain moment, no matter how much fortune may favour you, there is only so much good luck that can go around at one time. Whenever you're on the up, somebody somewhere isn't. When Arthunus mused deeper in his more introspective moments; usually as he lay in bed next to his wife, unable to sleep whilst Jaesa dreamt the night away, or meditating atop the Ashram's tower, delving like a particularly inquisitive rabbit into the warren of celestial enlightenment, he realised that the saying, or in fact, it's counterpoint, had become the very ethos of everything they sought to achieve.

The perpetual see-saw of life could always be seen in the force, going back as far as history itself remembered:

Whenever the light side was ascendant, when the numbers of Jedi swelled, when the hallways and chambers of the Tython academy rang with the excited chatter of voices, the dark side dwindled, fading into the background like a watchful understudy to an actor. And when misfortune kept that actor from the spotlight, whenever the Jedi order depleted, the understudy would burst forth to deliver his opening number; one could feel the dark side gorge itself, swelling to intense proportions and burning a Korriban-sized scar into the senses of all force-users. There was never equality, never a point when the scales balanced. Never was there any semblance of unity. The force was always in motion, perpetually tipping the balance, forcing the scales up or down whenever the threat of alignment came to bear. Why? Because so few had gone before them, they had so few predecessors to inherit this legacy from, so few idols, so few lights to guide their path. There had been Revan, the man who had been a Jedi, then a Sith, then a Jedi again and ultimately something far greater than the sum of both parts. After him, the names had faded into obscurity. The candles fizzled and flickered, shedding only the faintest memories of light onto the pages of the force. Arthunus sighed deeply, even now there were too few of them to truly achieve a semblance of unity, but they had laid the groundwork, and that was a mighty achievement in itself.

Opening his eyes, the Sith Lord shook himself from his reverie, casting his eyes briefly skyward and laughing despite himself. It certainly was raining somewhere. Right there to be precise. And by the force, it was chucking it down.

Casting his eyes across the platform, thanking the force for the slight margin of cover his position afforded him, just on the inside of one of the massive hollowed out wohshyyr trees, honeycombed with rooms and passageways that formed the ashram, the dark haired warrior observed his partner instructing their two most advanced apprentices in the arts of dual lightsaber combat. Which in this case meant Kira and Jaesa desperately engaging Kereniss with two sabers apiece, trying their hardest to retain balance due to being so unused to this lightsaber form, whilst the scarlet haired master swatted their attacks away using only a single blade in his offhand.

'Too sloppy Jaesa' Kereniss chided, albeit playfully, as he deftly parried a strike aimed at his neck, spinning backwards on his heel and parrying the now rather irate Sith apprentice's follow up strike, a savage swipe that would have severed Kereniss legs at the knees had it not been blocked.

_Had he allowed it, more like_ Arthunus internally corrected his own observation.

'Kira, there's not enough energy in your swings, you're pulling back too much!' came another sage-like scolding from his partner as he weaved under a slice at his midsection from the grimacing Jedi. Kira responded by using the momentum from her failed attack to pivot back around and launch a blisteringly fast stab at where her duelling tutor had been mere milliseconds before, instead finding only thin air and Jaesa's breastplate for a target. Kira screwed her eyes shut in brief terror at the thought of impaling her fellow apprentice, but the blow never landed. Opening her eyes, Kira found her sword arm locked in place as though by an invisible clamp, the end of her sunburst-coloured lightsaber mere inches from the breast of a particularly terrified Jaesa Wilsaam. Stepping back between the girls from his sidestepped position, Kereniss lowered Kira's arm from the force-lock he had held it in and rested a hand on both apprentices' shoulders, snapping them into the present gently. Like the end of a dream melding with the opening seconds of the morning.

'And so concludes our lesson on the Jar'Kai Lightsaber style.' Kereniss began, though he kept his lecture as brief as he could, sensing both girls hardly wanted to have to remember an essay-length dialogue when one had nearly impaled the other. 'The secret, which both of you were lacking a tad is carefully controlled aggression.' Jaesa looked up into Kereniss' eyes, her own brown orbs conveying a deep puzzlement at the lesson he was trying to impart, casting his gaze to the other Padawan, he sensed the same confusion emanating from Kira, so he elaborated as simply as he could, so as to not keep them long.

'Jedi and Sith have polar opposite teachings on lightsaber combat, particularly Jar'Kai, which was created with the aim of doing as much damage as possible very quicky: The Jedi teach you to not let your emotions get the better of you in combat, to remain calm and poised, which works very well for defensive forms, but not so well here. By contrast, the Korriban academy overseers would have you fuelling your each swing with malice, willing your opponent as much harm as possible, again useful when attacking with a single blade, where one can put more power into each stroke without overbalancing.' He paused, sensing growing realisation in his students, pleased at his teaching success, he gestured towards Jaesa, 'my dear, your each strike hits with the force of a rampaging reek, but your aggression forces you to swing too hard, to step too far, you overbalance yourself and make it too easy for your opponent to get inside your guard.' Jaesa nodded at the rewiew of her swordsmanship, internal calculations whizzing behind her eyes like a swarm of invisible fireflies. 'And Kira,' Kereniss began again, smiling warmly at the apprentice to take the edge off of his criscism, 'You hold back too much, I sense no aggression in you at all. By not willing your opponent harm you miss crucial opportunities, or you take them too late. Had you acted a half-second faster on the final strike, it would have been dear Arthunus over there blocking _you_ from running _me_ through.'

_Who says I'd have stopped her?_ Deadpanned Arthunus through the force, making the entire trio chuckle as they felt his words inside their minds.

_Ever the comedian._ Kereniss shot back teasingly, but he carried on with his monologue before Arthunus had a chance to display more of his fabled wit, or half of it.

'The long and short of it, is that both of you need to find the middle ground in your aggression. Finding the meeting point between Dark and Light is not limited to ideological philosophy after all. Jaesa: hold back a bit, Kira: Get mad a little, but not too much either of you, my good looks are my only real asset and I'd like them to remain intact, thank you.'

'Oh force forbid,' exclaimed Kira, making them all chuckle, but the apprentices bowed low to their mentor nonetheless.

'Indeed. Apprentice Carsen, Apprentice Wilsaam. You are dismissed, think on what you have learned today, if by the end of the week you can force me to use my stronger hand to defend myself, you pass.' Kereniss returned the bow, watching as the apprentices strolled off towards the inner canopy, their minds only just clicking onto just how soaked they all were, they had been too engrossed in the lesson to notice. Taking a brief moment to stare out over the jungle, Kereniss followed them, his emerald green lightsaber fizzling back to sleep in his hand.

Stopping by the archway hewn out of the otherwise indomitable wood, Kereniss looked at Arthunus, who had placed a comforting arm on his around his wife and was whispering sweet nothings into her ear to steady her, all the while not breaking eye contact with Kereniss. Both of them knew without having to say it, that there would not be time for a next lesson. For the dark presence in the force was pulsating in the backs of their conciousnesses, too acute for their padawans to sense, though Kereniss suspected some of the Ashram's older occupants, Jedi and Sith masters who had joined their quiet crusade into knowledge, had sensed the encroaching void too. The predator that was stalking them, planning it's first lunge at their collective jugular. Whether the hunter would lie patiently for a time and observe it's wary pray was unclear. Would the lioness pounce upon the antelope as it drank by the pool, at the first opportunity that arose. Or would it wait and watch, and pick it's moment, none could say. What was undisputable though was that the predator was at their doorstep, the lioness was in the long grass, approaching one step at a time.

The Empire had made planetfall.

Darth Lyravian had ever been known within the circles of his order for having an ironclad grip on his anger. Never had he given in to the goading of his rivals, never had he put his rage at the mercy of another. He let it bubble under the surface, building, growing, and gorging itself on every irritation, every taunt, every failure, like the millions of streams that all end up feeding the ocean. Never did the stopper burst of its own accord, never did the pressure become too much. That was why Lyravian was Baras' favoured sword arm. Why he had been tasked with this mission. Because he was the patient hunter, who would take every hit the enemy threw at him, let every failed assault feed his frustration, feed his power so that when the masterstroke fell, he would uncork the bottle he kept so tightly sealed within him, and rip his enemies asunder under the towering inferno of his hatred.

But for all that practice, all those built in psychological wards against provocation, the bounty hunter had still found a way under his skin.

Trebidan fit his profile to its extremities, and then some. The mercenary stood half a head shorter than Lyravian in his heavy battle plate, but he flooded Lyravian's senses with waves of such impregnable narcissism that his aura of command almost surpassed the Sith Lord's own. His eyes were ever hidden behind dun-yellow visor lenses that caused the merc's eyes to follow you everywhere, even though one could never be sure if his eyes were even open at all, or if he had any eyes to speak of. No-one could be sure of his race; Lyravain knew he was human due to his heightened senses, but to those without the force, the mercenary could have been human, Miraluka, Miralian, even a Zabrak. Almost every inch of his flesh was covered in something, primarily the faded, weather beaten, earthy-shaded greatcoat that never left his person. Though a pair of garish yellow gloves seemed a permanent feature as well, ever fiddling with the matched pistols holstered at his belt. One of the lesser officers under Lyravian's command had, so the rumours said, referred to them as 'space marigolds' when Trebidan was in ear shot. It did not surprise Lyravian that he had heard nothing from said officer since. The scum left only enough of his face visible to display a set of immaculately cleaned teeth, framed with a set of gold-plated incisors, the only touch of (albeit garish) refinement in his entire visage, and even then that was marred by the scars that stretched from the corners of his mouth in either direction, slicing an unnerving artificial smile into his deathly pale face. But these features were not what angered Lyravian so. Oh no. It wasn't the head-turningly arrogant swagger, the endless self-importance, or the almost complete lack of personal hygiene.

It was his greed.

Trebidan had never spoken of money in any of their (thankfully few, Lyravian noted) conversations, but by the force, he did not need to. His unspoken lust for wealth rolled off him in waves, polluting the force around him with such base materialism. Even Sith would not muddy the celestial waters with such interests, they hungered for power, for glory, to carve their names into the stars. Trebidan's aura told boastful tales of a life going through credits like oxygen, of weeks at a time spent in Nar Shadaa's red light district, of drinking correlian brandy like water, of double-crosses and double-agents, of murders in darkened streets and things even less savoury, all to keep the extortionate creds coming. The man had never opened his mouth of his exploits, yet in an instant, Lyravian saw his entire black career. The scum did not even try to hide it from those with the gift to see. The word 'honour' had never even entered his vocabulary. Lyravian had committed his fair share of atrocities, but he had never killed an unarmed man, never betrayed those who commanded him, and never given a warrior of equal standing any less than a death with a blade in their hands and their heads held high. The man before him would have laughed at that, cackled like a hyena and not even been faking it for the sake of comedy. And that was why the ultimate reason as to why the Sith lord hated this man. More than anything else.

He found honour _funny._

'So how long are ya planning to sit on yer' ass Darth? I thought we were meant to be killing Jedi, not standing around looking melodramatic.' Trebidan's bastardised Galactic basic hummed with a Correlian twang, and a slight, almost non perceivable slur that Lyravian knew without asking, had come from years of intense, unapologetic drinking. The man had gotten so used to talking whilst drunk, that the slur never truly left him. _You can keep the scum out of the cantina, but you can't keep the cantina out of the scum,_ the Sith Lord mused, forcing himself not to smile absent-mindedly. Instead he distracted himself from such thoughts by ploughing into the task at hand. Which began with verbally reprimanding the inebriatedly-eloquent mercenary.

'First of all _wretch_,' began the Darth, acutely aware that his insult did not so much as phase its target, 'I am standing, not _'sitting on my ass.'_, and I will continue to stand here as much as I please, I do not take orders from lowborn, piss-addled slime like yourself.'

'You flatter me.' Came the sardonic, almost disinterested reply.

'Second,' Lyravian segwayed into his next point without gracing his listener's sarcasm with a response, since that response was getting dangerously close to coming at the business end of a lightsaber. 'I am standing here because I am formulating a plan as to how best to crush the adversaries arrayed against us, so if you want to so much as smell the ashes of your frankly ridiculous pay check from my master, then I suggest you shut up and help me.'

'Woah there sithy boy, you have my attention, no need to work up a sweat in that armour of yours, you'd die of heatstroke.'

'Have you ever been impaled by a lightsaber?'

'You familiar with a sense of humour?'

'If that is your excuse for humour…'

'Then you have clearly never been to Nar Shadaa.'

Lyravian let the insults slide; he needed to retain his tranquillity for the moment, now was not the time, nor was it the place. All his anger would get him now was a dead bounty hunter, and no way of coordinating his tactics. _And a ridiculous amount of satisfaction_, an unbidden voice in the back of Lyravian's consciousness sounded. Lyravian did not argue with his inner self, but instead haggled somewhat. _Later, when his usefulness has run it's course._

'Yo Darth? You in there? Helooo…?

Lyravian was snapped out of his inner monologue by the very irritation (he would not call him a 'man') that he had internally debated. Brushing aside the sarcasm of his contempory, Lyravian took out a pocket-sized holo-projector from his cloak and activated it. The machine whirred, half a second of surprisingly melodious noise, as though somebody had taught a flock of bees to buzz in tune, before the sharply defined, and overpowingly blue holo-map of the area surrounding the ashram appeared. Lyravian had to admit, the complex itself was a feat of architecture, the way it melded into the trees to the point where the halls looked grown from the wood itself, as though no artifice by the hands of man or wookie had ever had to touch it, was astounding. The buildings formed an interconnected series of halls, connected by strong wooden bridges from tree to tree, around a massive wohshyyr tree in the centre. The scans showed that unlike most of the other trees in the complex which had ben slightly built into, the central one was entirely hollowed out, filled with a honecomb mix of passageways, armoures and meditation chambers. At the apex of the tree stood a single observatory tower, far above the other rooms, as though the ashram was craning it's neck to see the stars above the tree line. An unbidden image flooded into Lyravian's mind, and though he knew it was not his he did not fight against it. _Two tall men, wearing long, flowing robes, raising lightsabers above their faces in a salute to the heavens, the blue and green blades hailing their invisible scarlet cousin._ Lyravian did not hide his grin this time, he cared little if the bounty hunter saw it. His enemy knew he had the noose around their necks, now he just had to decide when to let them fall.

'Trebidan, let's see you begin to earn your salary.' Lyravian said, indicating with a finger a small section of the map, some distance from the ashram in the centre. The bounty hunter licked a pierced tongue about his scarred lips.

'Now you're talking my language…'

**AN: REVIEWS ARE LOVE, THE NEXT CHAPTER SHOULD BE UP ON THE WEEKEND, DEPENDNG ON HOW MUCH CELEBRATION/GRIEF COUNSELLING I NEED OVER MY EXAM RESULTS TOMORROW. MUCH LOVE TO ALL WHO READ THIS AND MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU **


End file.
